The present invention relates to a cartridge nozzle assembly and an ink injecting apparatus including the same, and more particularly, to a cartridge nozzle assembly, in a cartridge type, which accommodates ink inside and includes a nozzle to discharge the ink, and an ink injecting apparatus which jets ink to form a pattern using the cartridge nozzle assembly which is easily replaceable.
In general, an ink injecting apparatus for injecting a fluid in forms of droplets has been typically employed to an inkjet printer. In recent years, however, an ink injecting apparatus are widely being used in the advanced industry including, a display manufacturing process, a printed circuit board manufacturing process, or a DNA chip manufacturing process.
The ink injecting apparatus discharges droplets from fluid-state ink and is largely divided into a thermal type apparatus and a piezoelectric type apparatus according to droplet discharge method. Recently, for ultrafine printing, an electrostatic jet printer based on an electrodynamic process is widely being used.
The electrostatic jet printer jets ink using an electrostatic force based on a potential difference generated by applying a voltage between a nozzle and a board. The electrostatic jet printer discharges droplets or continuous jets using a force of pulling a liquid surface by an electrostatic force. Thus, unlike another type of conventional jet printers, the electrostatic jet printer is known to have various advantages including capabilities of nano-scale patterning, highly viscous ink discharging, uniform droplet generation, and so on.
The conventional electrostatic jet printers perform printing while continuously supplying ink into a nozzle using a syringe pump. Here, in a case where the nozzle needs to be replaced for performing various line-width printing operations, a great deal of time was conventionally required for nozzle replacement, including various manual works for disconnecting and reconnecting various connecting portions, including connecting a syringe pump for supplying ink, connecting a high voltage for forming an electrical field, connecting a pneumatic supply for supplying pneumatic pressure into a nozzle, and so on, and a work of injecting ink into a new nozzle after reconnecting. In addition, deformation may occur to a nozzle position or a nozzle connecting portion during reconnecting, resulting in an unstable printing operation.
Operability and setting reliability are quite important factors in repeated printing operations. However, the conventional electrostatic jet printer has not seen significant improvements to the operability and setting reliability. Therefore, there has been a limitation in the conventional electrostatic jet printer to be employed in the industrial process for manufacturing displays or semiconductors.